La isla de los pelícanos

A very capable young man, with a recent PhD in botany, receives a grant from the ministry to study the bromeliad epiphyte. What looks like and important mission hides, in truth, the fact that a reputed professor wants to push him aside to favor his son and place him as a full-time professor. This study grant takes place in the The Pelican Island, somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. It is a scene crowded with characters which, like him, have been displaced because they bother the mediocre in positions of power. The curious community, at times somewhat surrealist, has strange traditions, among them a communications system with colored codes which is transmitted by means of umbrellas. The novel criticizes nepotism, defends individuality before the vulgarization of the masses and the absurdity of globalization. The characters exude tenderness, mixed at times with disenchantment, which inevitably leads to taking sides with the weakest against the organized system.

This brought me back to reality, and while I had my breakfast I imagined how that piece of land would be lost in the haze of the Atlantic. If I must be sincere—and that is what I have set out to do in this novel—, I must confess that the Pelican Island was not exactly a deserted island, there were few people on it, but it was not deserted. Or, at least, that is what I had been told at the University.